Other Views: A shared symptom: ping-pong brain

Until we are told by the experts that it has been changed back, that is.

In our era, we've grown accustomed to having one study supersede another; to seeing one recipe for health turned completely on its head when another body of experts takes a second look at something that had seemed settled.

But it used to be that changes were years, or decades, in the making. Not these days. Last week's big news on cholesterol didn't even make it through the weekend. The headlines last week: Millions more may need statins to lower cholesterol. The headlines on Monday: Never mind.

One problem with these kinds of changes, of course, is that the people will soon enough simply tune out.

It's unfortunate because there are, in fact, a few verities, though it's not a little difficult to get a handle on them when recommendations seem to come and go like the tides.

The butter vs. margarine battle is a prime example.

Those who are old enough to remember when butter was deemed suddenly unhealthful doubtless just shook their heads when, decades later, margarine came to be seen as a tub full of trouble.

What was wrong with the latest cholesterol study? An online calculator at the heart of the new world order was found to be badly flawed. It flagged millions and millions of people who were likely quite healthy as needing treatment for high cholesterol.

And it didn't have to happen, as a review of the findings, before the study was released, had caught the error. But nothing was done.

Do you need to take medication to lower your cholesterol? Maybe, or maybe not. You could talk to your doctor, but just make sure he isn't relying on that new online calculator. '

--The Republican of Springfield (Mass.)

Site's price out of this world

An Atlas V rocket lifted NASA's Maven spacecraft into the heavens Nov. 18, the start of a mission that should offer the closest look ever at the Red Planet's atmosphere, and perhaps furnish clues as to how global climate systems change over eons.

We couldn't help but note the price tag for this mission: $671 million.

That's about the same price that was initially placed on the federal government's healthcare.gov website set up to help Americans sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

The Maven mission is still in its early stages, as well, but is off to a flying start, unlike the Obamacare website, whose near-terminal problems have been widely documented.

We're no fans of Obamacare, but we do hope the website gets fixed so that the program can proceed and Americans can find out whether it will succeed or fail on grounds other than technological glitches.

As for the latest mission to Mars, we're delighted to see that some government programs do work as designed, and that Americans of all political persuasions now have another high-tech science project to keep their eyes on.